Rating: Summary: My favorite movie, hands down. Review: This movie, for our time, is number one. Mostly, I think, because it is the antidote for all that time we had to spend under our desks ducking and covering. Some people think this movie is #2 behind Citizen Kane. Look at the Amazon reviews and there is no doubt Dr. Strangelove is #1. Peter Sellers was brilliant. George C. Scott was so realistic it's scary (and funny).
Rating: Summary: Easily the greatest black comedy EVER made! Review: Two planes having sexual intercourse to the song "Have a little tenderness". A psychotic general launching a nuclear attack on Russia because he thinks there is a communist conspiracy to poison his drinking water, endangering his "precious bodily fluids". The conflict with the coke machine. The hand with a mind of it's own. The phone conversation with the Soviet premier. Dr. Strangelove learnig how to walk. The line of dialogue "Mien Furher". All these things make this one of the greatest movies ever made. But it's the sight of the world ending set to the WWII teerjerker "We'll meet again" that let's us know we are in the hands of the greatest director in cinema history.
Rating: Summary: A great movie (especially if you are over 50) Review: I was born in 1945, thought the movie was great when I saw it in a theatre, and have enjoyed it ever since. I noticed that my children and even my younger friends do not have the same feeling for the movie as I do. Perhaps one had to live through the Cuban Missile Crisis to appreciate a movie that could make you laugh at something that otherwise was profoundly scary.
Rating: Summary: Outstanding, one of the best movies ever made Review: This movie is amazing. From beginning to end, there is no "down time"; it is worth watching again and again. There are so many hilarious parts that one can't mention them all. "Precious bodily fluids" indeed! If you haven't seen it yet make sure to rent it or buy it immediately.
Rating: Summary: An apocylytic masterpeice! Review: I just saw this movie for the first time in an indepedant thearter in Brooklyn, and it was INCREDIBLE. A film with a wry wit, and a sick sensibility, this movie is funnier and smarter than anything made in the last five years EASY. If anyone tried to do this today it would be an action movie with billion dollar special effects. (it just goes to show you don't need them) The acting by peter sellers was ingenious. He played three characters. A little known fact, james earl jones was in this as well. If you are looking for a comedy, a social commentary, a doomsday prohpecy, a war movie, or a joke about bodily fluids, BUY THIS MOVIE!!
Rating: Summary: " You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" Review: The best black comedy ever made. A loopy US general launches a nuclear strike on Russia and triggers global destruction. Kubrick's direction is genius but the real star is Sellar's flawless acting as the President of the USA, a Nazi scientist and as the Britsh Captain.
Rating: Summary: Lasting Impression Review: My lasting impression of "Dr. Strangelove" is, "This could have really happened!"Consider that on January 25, 1995, a Russian radar crew mistakenly identified a Norwegian scientific rocket as an incoming missile. In Moscow, a signal went out to the nuclear briefcases which always accompany President Boris Yeltsin and top defense officials. In addition, urgent radio contact was made with Russian submarine commanders. For the record, the Russian government had been notified several weeks earlier that the launch was coming, but no one told the radar crew.
Rating: Summary: Brilliant Review: Whenever I find myself talking with friends about movies, I think that "Strangelove" is invariably the one movie which I end up telling others that they just really MUST see. It seems that every time I watch it, I pick up something I hadn't noticed before. Peter Sellers gives one (or better put, three?) of the great performances in movie history. "Strangelove" is a work of great daring and absolute genius.
Rating: Summary: Undoubtedly the greatest film of all time! Review: There is truth in this farce. Dark, terrible truth. The distillation of government competency is howlingly funny (and unfortunately seemingly real). If there was one film that ever went for the jugular it was this one. Non-conformist to traditional film ideals this deals with the scariest possibility that those entrusted with power know absolutely nothing about how to use it. Except to misuse it. Ignorance in the highest reaches of government is sugar coated as satirical humor. Afterward, in reflection, the audience understands there's nothing funny about it.
Rating: Summary: No fighting, please! This is a great movie! Review: Following the obligatory, too-sober-to-be-true "this can never really happen" disclaimer, we are treated to approximately 90 minutes of sheer (though greatly understated) insanity. From General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) ordering a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union for very personal reasons, to the concluding montage of atomic explosions accompanied by Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again," we enter a world where the fate of humanity rests with ineffectual leaders, the sexually preoccupied, egomaniacs, and madmen (Not much different from reality, actually.). This is black comedy at its very finest, set in an atmosphere that is (Dare I say it, in light of Stanley Kubrick's last movie?) vaguely Nabokovian. Peter Sellers is magnificent in three roles: British Captain Lionel Mandrake, who almost saves the world from nuclear destruction; Adlai Stevenson-like Merkin Muffley, the decent but ineffectual U.S. President who can't control the insanity surrounding him; and Strangelove himself, the German genius who can't quite hide his naughty past, and who has his own plans for the post-nuclear world. As General "Buck" Turgidson, George C. Scott portrays a man more concerned with glory (A possible precursor to "Patton?") than with finding a sound solution to the real problem. And, of course, one cannot forget Slim Pickens as bomber pilot Kong, whooping and hollering as he waves his cowboy hat, suggestively straddling an atomic bomb in the ultimate Freudian Liebestod. From sexual obsessions and the eroticization of death (as in the opening sequence of a fighter plane refueling in midair), to the immature behavior of people deciding the world's fate (especially the antics of General Turgidson), to the telling lack of female characters (with the exception of Turgidson's scantily-clad secretary, who appears briefly and whom Turgidson urges to, "Say your prayers."), "Dr. Strangelove" packs more interest into ninety minutes than many over-extended films with lots of pyrotechnics and explosions. Of course, we cannot forget Kubrick's direction. He uses all the tricks: intricate detailing, the play of chiaroscuoro, bizarre camera angles, the use of music, etc., etc. And I cannot imagine it in anything but black and white (So hands off, Ted!). Although the American Film Insititute ranked it Number 26, I would at least place it somewhere in the Top 10, over some of the other films that ranked higher for what (I believe) may be sentimental reasons. This is a film where one of our greatest directors found his voice. And what a voice (or eye) it was!
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